


To Laugh At Our Fears

by nagapdragon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Gen, Helpful House Elves, Inspired By Tumblr, TW: Mentions of Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagapdragon/pseuds/nagapdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Lupin teaches all of their third years to face their fears in what looks to be a fun lesson with a boggart. Everyone's laughing except for one person who doesn't want to participate. </p>
<p>He knows what his boggart will reveal, and he's not willing to go that far. </p>
<p>And then Draco's friends intervene anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Laugh At Our Fears

**Author's Note:**

> So, I saw a post on Tumblr yesterday night about Draco not wanting to participate because his boggart would be his father, and that sort of inspired this. I would love to link back to the post, but I seem to have misplaced the tab I left it open in! If anyone finds it, please link me back to it on Tumblr (I'm nagapdragon there too) or just come to say hello!
> 
> Anyways, mind the tags, and enjoy!

“Now remember, the spell is _riddikulus_ and you have to picture your Boggart as something silly. This will be easier if you think about it before I open the wardrobe. Recognize what your biggest fear is and how you can make it silly! Who is first up?”

Everyone steps back, leaving Longbottom at the front of the class. Lupin leaps on him before Longbottom has a chance to stumble back behind the other Gryffindors, dragging him out in front of the rattling cabinet. 

“What are you afraid of, Neville?” Lupin asks.

“Professor Snape, sir.”

“Well, he is quite terrifying when he chooses to be.”

“Snape might actually thank Lupin to hear that,” Pansy stage-whispers to him, earning snickers from all the surrounding Slytherins. 

Lupin flicks his wand, apparently satisfied with whatever Longbottom told him, and the doors open. Snape steps out, towering over Longbottom, cracking his knuckles like he does when preparing to set in on the worst of his lectures. 

“R-r-riddikulus!”

Snape in a tight green dress, stumbling in high heels and probably under the weight of a truly awful at made of what might have once been a vulture and is now a pile of poorly-maintained feathers. Maybe they won’t tell Snape about this. 

After that, the entire class starts pushing to line up in front of the cabinet. Draco stays off to the side, leaning against a wall. He has absolutely no desire to participate. 

A disembodied hand appears in front of Dean Thomas, crawling across the floor to grasp at his ankle. 

“Riddikulus.”

The hand is snapped in a mousetrap, fingers twitching uselessly. 

Thomas moves away, high-fiving Finnegan as he steps into the front of the room. The Boggart twitches one last time, then becomes a banshee, who takes a deep breath. Draco covers his ears. A Boggart banshee can’t kill them, but it’ll be unpleasant all the same. 

“Riddikulus!”

The banshee raises a hand to her throat as she tries to scream and nothing comes out but a hoarse croak. Finnegan grins, and Weasley replaces him. The banshee tucks in on herself, becoming a massive spider. 

Weasley stares, raising his wand but not voicing the spell until the spider reaches one leg out. “Riddikulus,” he squeaks, not even as strongly as Longbottom managed. Draco suppresses a smile at that one as roller skates appear on the spider’s legs, taking it flat to the floor. 

“This class is ridiculous,” he comments to Blaise, leaning against the wall next to him. 

McGonagall appears in front of Granger, failing her. Granger turns the failed exam into an award recognizing her merit. One of the Patil girls makes a mummy trip over its own bandages, the other turns a giant cobra into a jack-in-the-box. Pansy gets Rita Skeeter, then makes her Quick Quotes Quill explode into a spray of ink and acid green smoke all over her. Slowly, the crowd starts to thin out as everyone who has gone is laughing at the back of the room. 

“Mr. Malfoy, how about you?” Lupin asks as Crabbe faces down an empty plate. 

“Not interested.”

“Very well.”

Blaise shoves him forwards as Crabbe fails to dispatch the plate, setting him in front of the Boggart. The plate stares back at him for a moment before shifting and stretching, slumping down to the floor in the form of a child. A child with white-blond hair, crouched in on himself and cradling his left arm to his chest. 

“Why is Malfoy afraid of a child?” one of the Gryffindors whispers, the only sound in the dead silence of the classroom apart from the Boggart child’s labored breathing. 

The Boggart stands when Draco does nothing, staring at the rest of the class with blank grey eyes but never meeting anyone’s eyes. He hears the gasps at the sight of the broken wrist, the way the Boggart holds itself to avoid pressure on broken ribs, the bruised handprint across its cheek with a split on its cheekbone from a ring. He hears words, but they are just a noise against the sound of his own heartbeat as he stares at himself. 

When someone steps in front of him, taking the Boggart’s attention from him and changing its form, he continues staring at the Boggart until it changes in to a dementor. 

“Riddikulus,” Potter states without inflection, and the Boggart phases into a curl of dark smoke which Lupin magic's back into the cabinet. This time, nobody laughs. 

Draco turns and walks out, not allowing himself to run until the Gryffindors have parted before him and the door slammed in the face of any who dare to follow him. Hogwarts gives him a nook to hide in, one of the strange secret places it always provides to students who need a quiet place, which is good because he can’t gather his thoughts enough to call the Room of Requirement like he did last time he got a letter from Lucius. 

He doesn’t dare call him Father in his own mind, no matter what he calls him out loud. That way lies madness.

 

***

 

The passage of time is marked by the meals that appear in his nook. They are delivered at the same time as they are served in the Great Hall, which makes that a safe time to sneak off to one of the bathrooms and have enough time to shower. Cleaning charms are good enough for a short time, but they leave him feeling faintly oily. He would have snuck into the dungeons, faced the possibility of the Inquisition known as Pansy Parkinson waiting for him there, but a house elf delivered a spare set of clothes with the fourth meal. 

The food and the clothes are not Hogwarts’ doing, just that of the house elves. A pallet sits next to his sixth meal, when it becomes clear he has no intentions of leaving any time soon, with the house elf squeaking an apology that they can’t fit a bed in Master Draco’s space. Books, not the ones from his bedside table in the dungeons but old favorites from inside his trunk, come with the ninth meal. Everything the house-elves think he might need to heal, everything they can manage without forcing him to move to an abandoned classroom where they could build him an entire tiny world, it appears in the hands of a house elf in Hogwarts livery, each any every one squeaking “We has brought Master Draco what he needs!”

House elves like to fix broken things.

His twenty-fifth meal, dinner on the ninth day, is delivered while he’s showering. He sneaks back to his nook, the portraits keeping watch for him so he doesn’t run in to anyone. The avenging angel sweeps out a protective wing beyond the confines of its frame and he steps into the wing. The wall parts around him, allowing him back into his nook, sealed to the world once the angel retracts its wing. 

“Dobby has brought Master Draco what he needs!” the elf squeaks, laying a long-fingered hand on Draco’s knee. No wonder the elves are treating him well, if Dobby is here. Lucius never treated the house elf well, but Dobby was always there to treat Draco’s wounds and wipe his tears, no matter whether he fell and scraped his knee or… not. Draco drops to one knee, putting him on the same level as Dobby, before addressing him.

“A time turner?”

Dobby’s face falls. “Master Draco wants a time turner? Dobby can find Master Draco a time turner, but Dobby did not bring that.” The elf removes his hand, preparing to vanish and find a time turner. 

“No, no, Dobby, it was just a joke. You and the other house elves have given me so much. I just don’t know how to face everyone else now that they know.”

“Master Draco was always strong,” Dobby tells him. “Master Draco just needs more than the help of a house elf now.”

Draco slumps back against the wall, moving Dobby’s hand to his shoulder so he can sit comfortably. The other house elves didn’t dare touch him except for once when he needed help getting a the knots out of his hair because he hadn’t brushed it for days. Dobby knows that when he’s like this, he just needs that little bit of contact. Too much either hurt or overwhelmed him, too little and he retreated into his mind, silent and non-responsive. 

“Dobby has to go, Master Draco. The other elves need Dobby to help with dessert.”

“Go on, Dobby. You’ve taken good care of me.” 

Dobby smiles, giving Draco a hug before vanishing back to the kitchens.

“Was that Dobby’s gift, the reminder that I’ve been through worse?” he muses aloud. He’s losing the filter from mind to voice that keeps him safe at home, safe as he already knows at fourteen that Lucius is Dark, Mother will not speak up to save him, and he is not the son Lucius wants. 

A ripple in the corner is his only warning.

“It’s me.”

Draco would know him anywhere, even without the stupid scar that marks him as the Wizarding World’s darling. Harry Potter has an Invisibility Cloak, and a good one too, if Draco only noticed a ripple in midair when Potter was already removing it. He’s proud of himself for not betraying his surprise at all and keeping his voice as cool as possible, knowing that Potter just witnessed enough to get Draco condemned in most of pureblooded society. 

“No wonder you stopped getting caught out after curfew.”

Potter barely cracks a smile, sliding down the wall next to him. He holds out his hands, in comparison. One of them is just barely lighter in color, the color of very old scar tissue. 

“I was absolute rubbish at cooking, especially breakfast, when I was young. Like six years old, cooking on a step stool to reach the stovetop. I could barely lift the frying pan, so I regularly scorched bits of my cousin’s pancakes trying to flip them. My cousin pressed my hand into the hot pan, telling me that maybe this way I’d remember not to burn his breakfast again. My uncle just told me to stop making that hideous noise and do the dishes.” Potter folds his hands in his lap, not pushing for a reply, just sitting. 

“The Boggart. That wasn’t the first time, but it was in the time where I realized that if I made a fuss, it proved me weak and worthy of his punishment, so I took it silently. It made him angry, made him hurt me more, until he finally got bored.” The words come out all in a rush as his voice cracks. “All the others never asked why they didn’t see me at all for a year. There was always something broken, and in the society I was raised in, _Crucio_ was preferred to the horribly mundane Muggle methods.”

“They used the Cruciatus on children?” Potter covers his mouth like he didn’t mean to say that much. 

“Weasley and his ilk are some of the only purebloods to be raised without the use of the curse. Oh, and Longbottom, though that is out of respect. His cousins are still raised with it. We learn quickly not to make mistakes.”

Potter sighs. “They played off my hand as a clumsy accident, as they did with all the scrapes and bruises, but it made them a little more careful. Mistakes meant meals I didn’t get to eat, even now. The simple fact that I go here means that I never get to eat breakfast over the summer. I cook breakfast, serve it, and go immediately to dishes. If I sneak a bite, that’s all I get for that day, so I don’t try.”

“What’s the point of this, Potter? To prove that the Saviour of the Wizarding World didn’t have a perfect life?”

“To get you to believe me when I say I understand. That I stepped up there in front of you fully expecting to see my cousin or my uncle, but I know that I see the dementor because when I see one, I hear my mother screaming ‘Not Harry, please not Harry’ while Voldemort kills her.” Potter takes a deep breath. “That if you need someone to talk to, you can talk to me, and I won’t judge you for surviving.”

“I can’t go talk to you. People would talk, and that’s assuming I’m willing to leave here.”

Potter takes his Invisibility Cloak from his lap, depositing the silky cloth in Draco’s. “Use this or ask a house elf, and I’ll come back. Take whatever time you need. Parkinson and Zabini have been taking notes and forging assignments for you and Snape scared the staff into pretending they don’t notice by threatening to put Veritaserum in all their goblets at dinner.”

“He takes care of his own.”

“Good thing someone is. I’ll expect that back when you’re ready to rejoin your House, Malfoy.”

Draco stops Potter from leaving with a hand in his robes, almost yanking one shoulder off. “It’s Draco. If I’m to trust you, you can at least not call me the same way they call him.”

“Draco, then, but only if you call me Harry.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Harry smiles at him the same way he would at any of the Gryffindors, any of his friends, and for once Draco remembers that they’re only children acting out their parents’ feuds. Thirteen years old, and they feel like adults, but they aren’t. 

When did he stop being a child?

“Till next time, Draco.”

“Thank you, Dobby,” he says aloud, knowing the house elf will hear him. “That might have been just what I needed right now.”

 

***

 

When the hippogriff bows to Harry, he spares a glance and an amazed smile for Draco, the _can-you-believe-that-just-happened_ look that Draco’s realizing makes up half of Harry’s expressions. He just left the nook behind the angel a month ago, and still Harry hasn’t ignored him in favor of everyone else. 

“If Potter can do it, anyone can,” Blaise grumbles. Months ago, that would have been enough for Draco to take as a challenge, to go do it himself no matter what Hagrid or any of the other professors say. 

“I’m not as crazy as Potter is,” he says instead. “That thing could take your arm off as soon as look at you. I’ll stay right over here, thank you very much. I like my limbs attached.”

 

***

 

“Draco,” the patch of air by his shoulder whispers in the quiet library.

Draco gets up and walks into the stacks, wondering why Harry is staying hidden this time. He doesn’t have any problem with approaching Draco in broad daylight, sitting down next to Draco at the Slytherin table to ask about their Potions homework, or any of a thousand little things. 

“What’s up?”

“Is there any way you can delay the Ministry laying sentence on Sirius Black?”

“Why?” He can, but it will require doing something that would make Lucius have to take a break to check on him. An injury, perhaps. Lucius wouldn’t care, but if word came through that Draco was injured and Lucius is already in the castle, social pressures will make him at least come check on him and they can’t take a vote without him.

“Black is innocent, but the Ministry won’t listen in time to stop his execution. He’s also my only shot at getting away from the Dursleys in the summers.” Harry shifts closer, pressing his shoulder against Draco’s in an invisible plea. “He might be able to help you, too. You’re his blood, and he’s pureblooded.”

“Can you give me an hour?”

“Thank you, Draco.”

“Don’t screw up, Harry.”

Harry chokes on a laugh. “I’ll try.”

Draco rolls his eyes. Harry doesn’t have a plan. Well, at least Draco does. Quidditch accident, simple enough. The weather is awful and nobody will think twice if Slytherin’s Seeker wants some extra practice to get that competitive edge against Gryffindor in the future.

It’ll hurt, but Madam Pomfrey can fix him up and Lucius has done worse without allowing him access to anything but Muggle first aid, and only that because the house elves snuck it in. 

 

***

 

The next time he faces a Boggart, it is while helping Harry clean out some of the rooms in Grimmauld Place. This one is in the grand piano and leaps out from the underneath when he sits down to play. 

Lucius Malfoy stalks around the edge, his wand-cane tapping with every step, features coldly impassive as he is only when he truly wants to inflict pain. Draco fixes a picture in his head, _pushes_ , and- “Riddikulus!”

 


End file.
